2024 GABF Guided Routes | Hoppy Beers to Try at GABF

The Great American Beer Festival is finally back! With the insane multitude of beers being served on the festival floor, it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. So PorchDrinking is once again here to help you navigate that lineup and help with planning your route at the fest. As part of that research, we’ve sifted through every beer pouring at this year’s fest to curate a series of themed routes to help you plan for your GABF based on various styles and flavors.

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FlyteCo Brewing | Hop Is My Co-Pilot

Many breweries claim to have the freshest wet hop brew, but FlyteCo Brewing Hop Is My Co-Pilot likely takes top honors. Early in the morning on Aug. 15, FlyteCo co-founder Eric Serani piloted a small plane from Denver across the Rocky Mountains to Billy Goat Hop Farm on Colorado’s western slope. After a quick tour of the farm, Serani loaded 60 pounds of freshly-picked hops onto his plane and flew back to Denver for a mid-day brew session. Read More

Bean to Barstool Podcast | Bonus: All About Hops

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Bear Republic Brewing | Racer 7 Hazy IPA

Bear Republic Brewing Company was a west coast staple in the early days of craft beer. Prior to the current excesses of beer choices, if you wanted an IPA at your local spot you were pretty much limited to Stone, Lagunitas and Bear Republic. Read More

Hop Water—The Next Big Thing?

As the weather in some parts of the country is warming up, a bubbly, refreshing NA beverage is riding the shirttails of Dry January. Hop Water is sliding into a go-to position for many beer enthusiasts. Hop water, which is essentially dry-hopped carbonated water, provides that crisp punch of Lupulin flavor we love in IPAs without the carbs and alcohol—making it suitable to drink anytime, anywhere.

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Off the Rails Brewing | Yolo IPA

Off the Rails Brewing is situated on historic Murphy Avenue, right by the Caltrain rail station, in Sunnyvale, California, a larger ‘burb in the South Bay area between San Francisco and San Jose. For the longest time, they were draft-only, but all that changed a few weeks ago when they began canning a few of their brews, including Yolo, their signature “fruity” IPA. Read More

Dry Dock Brewery Celebrates Hop Workers Through Art

Starting Friday, Dry Dock Brewing in Aurora, CO, celebrates the unsung heroes of the craft beer industry — hop workers. The brewery will showcase the artwork of Christie Tirado, which focuses on the Mexican migrant and immigrant workers who facilitate this critical beer ingredient. These workers toil under often-difficult conditions to plant, trellis, train and harvest hops in the Yakima Valley, Wash. Read More

21st Amendment & CLS Hop Farms | Close Encounters of the Hop Kind DIPA

21st Amendment recently released their Imperial IPA collaboration with family-owned hop farm, CLS Farms. Close Encounters of the Hop Kind is a Double IPA using some of the new and innovative hops coming out of Yakima Valley. Eric Desmarais, co-founder of CLS, was on hand at a recent event to walk people through the process that brewers go through to chose certain hops. Using El Dorado, Cashmere, Zappa, and their new CLS-X14 as examples for what different hops evoke and express.

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Claimstake Brewing | Hit Me With Your Best Hops

Are you looking for some old-school dank bitterness with some new school hops? Hit Me With Your Best Hops, just might be the answer. Claimstake Brewing has definitely dialed up the bitterness but did it in a way without knocking you out. Read More

Outer Range Brewing | Nuclear Powder DIPA

Outer Range Brewing in Frisco, Colorado has become quite well known for their perfectly crafted IPAs. From west coast pine flavors to east coast tropical flavors, you can find something on the menu to cure your hop craving. Rightfully so, the taproom is always bustling with locals and tourists alike enjoying the product of their hard work. With such success it would be easy to become complacent. So in the age of dry hopping beers for flavor where do you go? That’s where cryo hops come in. Their recent DIPA Nuclear Powder showcases this type of hop to bring more variety to their menu.
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Well Crafted Beer Company | Colonel Forbin

India Pale Ale is a style that is constantly morphing and adapting. There is plenty to be said, though, that the West Coast IPAs, like Colonel Forbin, can still be found on shelves at local stores.

For those in the Philadelphia region, there are some great IPA options worthy of having, including one from Well Crafted Beer Company. That would be the Colonel Forbin, and it brings true refreshment and plenty of hoppy flavors to the table.

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Deschutes Brings Hops Freshness With Its Fresh Family Lineup

The newest hop-centric release from Deschutes Brewery, Squeezy Rider West Coast IPA, is high in fruity hop flavor but low in IBU.

“We really mean it when we say our Fresh Family beers are about hop flavor with balanced bitterness as a supporting star,” said Product Development Director Veronica Vega. Other beers in the Fresh Family include Fresh Squeezed IPA, Fresh Haze IPA, Lil’ Squeezy Juicy Ale and Royal Fresh Imperial IPA.

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Booneshine Brewing Co. | Space Pegasus NE Style IPA

Located in the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern North Carolina, Booneshine Brewing Co. calls the town of Boone its home. And, like many of the residents of Boone, they are explorers and adventurers, and their beers reflects that—both in name and ingredients.

Their Space Pegasus—a New England-style IPA—is also aptly named after exploring, as it will take you on an “intergalactic adventure”.

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The State of Independent Hop Farming

Mighty Axe Hops is an 80-acre hop farm located near Foley, Minnesota, roughly a 90-minute drive northwest from Minneapolis. It’s the largest hop farm from Michigan to Idaho and grows 13 varieties of hops.

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Yakima Chief Hops Announces the Pink Boots Blend for 2020

Starting in 2017, Yakima Chief Hops (YCH) and members of the Pink Boots Society (PBS) meet up at the Great American Beer Festival for a unique event, aptly named the Annual Hop Rub. YCH brings the best of their hop harvest, carefully laid out on tables for attendees to smell, touch and taste, with the goal of selecting the annual Pink Boots Society hop blend. Read More

Saint Arnold Brewing Company | Art Car IPA

The phenomenon of the art car has intrigued me for some time. Have you ever seen these things? Cars covered from bumper to bumper with colorful paint jobs and anything from mosaic tile to plastic figurines. Sure, some look like a hoarder hoarked on a hooptie, but there are certainly some examples that truly are mobile art. The layers of detail and creativity are impressive, and it’s that creative spirit that inspired Saint Arnold’s Art Car IPA.

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Hop Harvest at The Hop Yard

As a crisp breeze blows in the early morning, it is clear that fall is in air. Although the sun still shines at high noon, the days are ever so slightly shorter and the nights ever so slightly cooler. With the change in season comes not only pumpkin-spiced everything and the return of flannels, but also harvest. One can enjoy that spiced latte at the farmers market while picking up the year’s best produce. However, it is not just gourds and sunflowers in bloom: The start of fall is also hop harvest season.
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5 Questions With… Odell Brewing Co.’s Agronomist, Scott Dorsch

How do you stand out in the ultra-competitive IPA market? Maybe you go the hazy route; maybe you go with something double or triple-hopped, or maybe you just make a damn good single-hop IPA. That’s the inspiration behind Odell Brewing Company’s Wolf Picker IPA series, which shines a light on a new hop in each iteration.

The 2019 Wolf Picker features the new Oregon-grown Strata hop and is the first of the series to debut in cans. Sourcing unique hops that stand out amongst the competition is a tough job, but it’s one that Odell’s agronomist Scott Dorsch relishes. A typical agronomist role requires the person to be an expert in the science of soil management and crop production, but it takes on a bit of a new meaning when you work at a craft brewery. We asked Dorsch five questions about his career in agronomy, why he chose Strata for the latest Wolf Picker and what excites him about the hop marketplace in 2019.

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2018 GABF Route Guide | Hoppy Beers Route

For the past month and a half our staff has been reaching out to every brewery attending the Great American Beer Festival to try to preview what they’ll be bringing to the fest. As part of that research, we’ve sifted through that list of beers to bring you a series of themed routes to help you plan for your GABF based on various styles and flavors.

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Homebrewing Recipe | Free From Amber Ale

The number one thing you will learn as a brewer is that there is always room to improve. Even the most professional people in the business know this. The very first beer I ever brewed was an amber ale that somehow surpassed all expectation by getting infected and tasting like sour lemons. There’s no shame in admitting it because everyone has gone through a similar, baffling situation in their first year of brewing.

Thanks to criticism from professional judges, I’ve found out what has been the bane of my brewing existence since I moved to a new apartment. Three of my beers were found to have medicinal off-flavors, resulting in band-aid/astringent tasting bottles. This type of problem can occur due to over-crushing grains or yeast contamination, but I was convinced it was a problem with the water. These reasons are why I constantly advise brewers to learn about the chemicals in your water source (using a system like Ward Lab) or by talking out the issue with other local homebrewers. Using the Brewer’s Friend Water Chemistry Calculator is a good way to figure out what needs to be added to accommodate your beer recipe.

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